Recent improvements in semiconductor processing technology (e.g. higher speed materials and reduced line widths) have made it possible to integrate increased complexity and higher speed circuit architectures in a semiconductor wafer or die of a given size. Such improved microelectronic hardware components, coupled with advances in signal processing capability of application software, have made it possible to physically house a greater number of signal processing devices within a given support structure and achieve a significantly enhanced operational performance. As a consequence, an ever increasing number of mechanical and electromechanical control systems (e.g. aircraft flight control and automotive engine and brake control systems) have been replaced by lightweight and reduced volume electronic units. In an environment where ambient conditions are subject to extreme fluctuations (which is certainly the case of vehicle control systems) circuit parameters may vary over a wide range, so that circuit design cannot be necessarily tailored to optimize performance criteria for all operating conditions. For example, active components of a circuit architecture inherently produce larger currents at the low end of the temperature range over which they operate.
In addition to variations in signal processing performance with changes in temperature, the actual physical configurations of the circuit layouts may introduce unwanted circuit characteristics which cause circuit components to operate erroneously. In particular, the conductive (e.g. metal) links used for power/ground feeds to components on the chip from power/ground pads, and to which pad driver circuits of the chip are connected, along the periphery of the chip, possess an inherent amount of unwanted resistance/inductance. The pad drivers which are powered by these links typically produce a peak capacitively loaded output current on the order of 50-100 ma. In a large complexity integrated circuit architecture, where a plurality of (e.g. twenty) circuit pins may change states effectively simultaneously, the total magnitude of the current variation among plural output pad drivers may exceed a peak of one ampere which, due to the non-insubstantial resistance of the power/ground link, may result in a voltage drop applied through a driver to an output pad that is sufficient to be mistaken by a load device as a momentary change in logic level, thereby causing misoperation of the system. This current surge problem is particularly pronounced at low temperature operation, where the magnitude of device currents are inherently larger, thereby increasing the peak values of current and voltage transients, and where external circuits may be faster and thus more sensitive to such a transient.